Day by Day entries are from Mark Twain, Day By Day, four volumes of books compiled by David Fears and made available on-line by the Center for Mark Twain Studies.  The entries presented here are from conversions of the PDFs provided by the Center for Mark Twain Studies and are subject to the vagaries of that process.    The PDFs, themselves, have problems with formatting and some difficulties with indexing for searching.  These are the inevitable problems resulting from converting a printed book into PDFs.  Consequently, what is provided here are copies of copies.  

I have made attempts at providing a time-line for Twain's Geography and have been dissatisfied with the results.  Fears' work provides a comprehensive solution to that problem.  Each entry from the books is titled with the full date of the entry, solving a major problem I have with the On-line site - what year is the entry for.  The entries are certainly not perfect reproductions from Fears' books, however.  Converting PDFs to text frequently results in characters, and sometimes entire sections of text,  relocating.  In the later case I have tried to amend the problem where it occurs but more often than not the relocated characters are simply omitted.  Also, I cannot vouch for the paragraph structure.  Correcting these problems would require access to the printed copies of Fears' books.  Alas, but this is beyond my reach.

This page allows the reader to search for entries based on a range of dates.  The entries are also accessible from each of the primary sections (Epochs, Episodes and Chapters) of Twain's Geography.  

Entry Date (field_entry_date)

November 13, 1897

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November 13 Saturday – Two copies of FE were deposited with the US Copyright Office [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Afterword materials p.29, Oxford ed. 1996]. The English version, More Tramps Abroad,, varied slightly and had an official publication date of Nov. 25, 1897.

November 15, 1897

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November 15 Monday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to an unidentified clergyman, who had evidently written with examples of what Sam called “mental telegraphy,”; and also questioned the forgotten use of a detail, a mole, in TS,D. The clergyman also mentioned James Payn (1830-1898; English novelist, from 1883 editor of the Cornhill Magazine), and offered cases where suggestion had been made by “unsentient things.” Sam replied:

November 17, 1897

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November 17 Wednesday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam and Livy wrote to H.H. Rogers, including a paragraph from Livy with formal request of the three $10,000 payments to be made to the Webster creditors as outlined in Sam’s Nov. 11.

November 18, 1897

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November 18 Thursday – Sam attended a world premiere of the operetta Blumen Mary (Mary’s Flower Shop) at the Theater an der Wien. He was spotted by a Neue Freie Presse reviewer and his presence was reported the next day on p.6. The operetta was set in New York, with music by Charles Weinberger and book and lyrics by Leo Stein and Alexander Landesburg. Dolmetsch writes:

November 19, 1897

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November 19 Friday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus. He had long been interested in the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French officer sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana for passing military secrets to the Germans. In 1896 evidence surfaced that a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was the real traitor. At this time Esterhazy was about to be tried.

November 20, 1897

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November 20 Saturday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Percy Spalding of Chatto & Windus. He sent his poem, “In Memoriam” for Susy. Livy needed 50 copies of, together with a large photo of Susy; he was tardy in requesting these copies [MTP]. See Nov. 30? To C&W.

November 23, 1897

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November 23 TuesdayTrue W. Williams (Truman), illustrator of Sam’s Sketches, New and Old, TS and HF, died in Chicago at the age of 58 from an aortic aneurysm. See entries Vol. I.

November 26, 1897

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November 26 FridaySam’s notebook:

Nov. 26. To-day, 1.30, saw the great dramatic incident in the House when 60 policemen marched in & cleared the Presidium of 10 Social Democrats by violence. 4 were imprisoned on the premises. Wolf was arrested at 2 p.m. at 2.30 the Left seemed cowed, & made not much noise. So I left.

November 27, 1897

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November 27 SaturdayLivy’s 52nd birthday.

The New York Times of Nov. 28, datelined Berlin, Nov. 27, ran a squib on p. 1, “Czech Hits Mark Twain,” headlined “The American Author Injured Going Out of the Reichsrath.” The report was false.

November 28, 1897

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November 28 Sunday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Samuel E. Moffett, who worked for the Hearst newspapers, including the N.Y. Journal. After offering the following he gave a brief, positive status for family members.

December 1897

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December – A cartoon of Mark Twain by F. Graetz as “The American Diogenes” appeared on the cover of the December issue of Der Floh. The background scene includes politicians rioting, with Sam standing amidst the rubble and street pipes being installed, which he had complained of. See insert.

Sam’s notebook entry lists Ralph Keeler’s 1869 novel, Gloverson and His Silent Partners: “librarian had a copy” [NB 42 TS 50].

December 1, 1897

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December 1 Wednesday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Livy wrote for Sam to Chatto & Windus, asking them to please forward an enclosed letter for Samuel McClure’s London office as Sam did not know the address [MTP].

December 2, 1897

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December 2 Thursday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Livy wrote to Chatto & Windus, asking them to send her husband’s book which contained “the little farce ‘The Miesterschaft’” to Frau Hof Kapell -Meister Hans Richter, in Vienna. She also asked that the new Life of Lord Tennyson by his son be sent to Mrs. Langdon in Elmira ( Ida Langdon) [MTP]. Note: Hans Richter was the chief conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic.

December 5, 1897

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December 5 Sunday – The full front page of the Oesterreichische Illustrirte Zeitung featured a cartoon with Mark Twain telling tales to the locals [Dolmetsch 139]. Tenney cites the article inside as “Mark Twains humoristische Schriften” [26].

December 7, 1897

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December 7 Tuesday – Sam attended the Burgtheater for a premiere of Gerhart Hauptmann’s Die versunkene Glocke (The Sunken Bell). One or both of his daughters may have accompanied him. Livy was still not going out in public [Dolmetsch 113-14].

December 8, 1897

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December 8 Wednesday – Sam and perhaps others of the family attended the opera Die Walkure, with Gustav Mahler in his first season as the Hofoperndirektor, after which he noted, “W.[agner’s] music is better than it sounds.”

Dolmetsch writes,

December 9, 1897

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December 9 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Livy wrote to Chatto & Windus, who evidently had asked for clarification about the little book containing “Meisterschaft” she had requested on Dec. 2. Sam thought it might be in the book of sketches containing “The £1,000,000 Bank Note,” or perhaps in The Stolen White Elephant. , If it wasn’t in any English volume, not to bother further with it [MTP].

December 10, 1897

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December 10 Friday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to Harold Godwin’s Dec. 9 that “a gratifying large per centage” of his creditors had written letters to him that he was “proud to keep.” Sam thanked him personally for his personal letter and “for the spirit which moved” Godwin to do what he did “in the matter of the indebtedness” [MTP]. Note: For Sam to have answered Godwin’s Dec. 9, he must have received a cable from Katharine Harrison regarding the matter. The cable is not extant.

December 11, 1897

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December 11 Saturday – Here—as in London—Livy & the girls find that the name Clemens is no sufficient disguise. They have Pleasant adventures.

Sam related an episode of Clara and Katy Leary’s the day before, with a cabbie and a box office man at a theater, who softened once Clara gave the name Clemens.

Livy has adventures, too. And Katy—but you know Katy. If I should start in on Katy’s adventures with this family’s name, a certain amount of time would be consumed.

December 12, 1897

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December 12 Sunday – In Vienna, Austria Sam wrote an aphorism to an unidentified person: The proper proportions of a maxim: a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense. Truly yours, Mark Twain. Vienna,

Dec. 12/97” [MTP: Philip C. Duschnes catalog].

December 13, 1897

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December 13 Monday – The New York World ran an article, “Mark Twain in Vienna” p.6, that contained Sam’s reply to the question, had he ever seen the like of this Austrian parliament?